Months ago I somehow got my wireless (the terrible Realtek RTL8188CE) card working, at least in most wireless environments.
From my notes, and from /etc/conf.f/net it worked with ndis_wrapper, rather than with the original Realtek drivers.
Not sure all is at it seems, because I ended up removing the Realtek drivers from /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, and things still worked.

But after the latest world update, things (net.wlp3s0, hence also avahi-daemon, hence also cupsd and cups) don't work anymore.
Furthermore, it's not clear how they could've possibly worked.
wpa_supplicant (when invoked with -h) says only the wext, nl80211, and wires drivers are supported.
Which is why when I try the config that worked for months, with
wpa_supplicant_wlp3s0="-Dndiswrapper"
or when I try
wpa_supplicant_wlp3s0="-Drtl8192ce"
I get:

Where am I going wrong here?
- do people usually hack the wpa_supplicant installation so it supports more drivers?
- does the word "drivers" as used and listed by wpa_supplicant even mean the same as the "wireless drivers" I'm trying to use (ndiswrapper, rtl8192ce)?
- can Realtek drivers be driven by wext / nl80211 with some specific configuration I missed?

I don't understand your reply.
Well, I understand the desire to get rid of the so-called "predictable" names (*).
But having carefully followed the udev upgrade instructions 5 months ago, my system will no longer work
with the old names. The network setup did work with the new names. In fact, it also worked with another wife in USB.
I could switch between wifi's and everything

What makes you suspect the new network names are related?
Any checks I can do for that?

(*) they're not very predictable when I happen to plug in my USB wifi into another USB port. And they are ugly, long, and hard to remember. No upside for a user like me.